(Paradise)

We came back last night from our Spring break adventure on a small island just off the Malaysian coast, named Pangkor Laut. It was magical! We fell asleep to the sounds of the waves, in our huts standing on pillars over the ocean, and we woke up to that same sound enveloping us. We dined like Maharajas, and bathed like Maharajas in the traditional spa where we got soaked and scrubbed and washed and massaged with oil and filled up with ginger tea so strong that it burned in the throat but left the sinuses uncommonly clear.

We went to the beach on the other side of the island, with the inspired name Emerald Bay. The girls buried each other in the sand and went for swims in the green sea and were pinched by crabs and found seashells and a dead fish that they buried properly behind a rock.

Anders and the girls went for a jungle walk across the island and that same morning a family of monkeys played outside our huts with an empty water bottle, chatting and chasing each other like children on a playground. Every morning on our way to breakfast we passed a tree full of sleeping bats hanging like ripe fruits from the branches, and one day black-and-white hornbills with their characteristic orange beaks joined us for watermelons that they brought to their chick back in their nest.

It was also a business trip for my husband’s job, and we made new friends during long Chinese and Malay dinners. One night we met Uncle Lim, the famous Chinese chef who is still working at age eighty plus in the restaurant named after him: Uncle Lim’s Restaurant. The next day we happened to meet him on the island and he offered us sticks of grilled chicken sate from a pink plastic bag that he hugged to his chest.

I wondered more than once how I would ever manage to leave this paradise island! When the time came to climb into the boat that would take us back to the mainland, the only consolation was that we had decided to return again, as soon as possible!

I wish everyone could visit a paradise island once in a while: to leave all worries behind as the beauty and wonders of nature cleanse the soul from stress and anxiety, and just inhale the ocean air and feel the warm breeze caress the skin as the waves whisper their eternal lullaby.